The Rotted Carnival
by Frosty Autumn
Summary: [SEQUEL] A year has passed since the rusted carousel incident. Bessie has never been quite the same since, despite attempts to live a normal life again. Jerome is gone. Some things, however, don't stay gone. With his second breath of life, Jerome feels his bastardized circus needs just one more addition for that authentic touch. He decides to pay a visit to an old friend...
1. Safe, But Not Sound

**I guess you **_**could**_ **read this without reading the first installment, but a lot of character references to the first may go over your head. If you want to just read Bessie as an already established past figure of Jerome's life from the circus and another hapless victim, go ahead, but if you'd like to be shown more about her and how she is tied to him, I would recommend reading my other story, The Rusted Carousel, first.**  
**I've never written a sequel before. I definitely don't want to disappoint, sequels always make the stakes higher. Hopefully I can deliver.**

**I had promised this ages ago, and since I got my new job I'm a little pressed for time, but I wanted everyone who was a fan of the last one to know that I meant what I said when I suggested a sequel, and some people were pretty keen on it.  
**

* * *

Bessie's parents forbade her from watching anything on the news involving him, because they knew how much it would upset her. Nevertheless, she could not help herself sometimes. She needed to check on him. Keep tabs on his whereabouts.

They were right, though. Every time a news flash sprung up it left her with a heavy feeling, like she'd swallowed a rock. The sensation would stay in there for days after, until time dulled it.

He called his little band of roving convicts The Maniax, and just like how he planned with Bessie to be a potential sidekick, he appointed himself leader, craving the spotlight at all times.

_I just want to see the old you again_, Bessie pined privately. All that hidden abuse and dismantling of his psyche, until it became so fragile it shattered in the most reckless way, can't have been easy for him. Now that he had time to reflect, to bask in the devastation he caused, maybe the outlet was making him see clearly now. Maybe there was a possibility that he could return to his old self now that the burst pipe had time to empty.

Not that any of that excused Jerome's reign of terror. What he'd done to her. What he'd done to other people. He would have to pay severely for what he'd done. But Bessie felt helpless just cutting him off, especially because she'd been a part of his life for so long. In truth she knew she had to accept the possibility of never meeting him again for her own safety, and of that she was willing to compromise with. To do absolutely nothing, though, she simply felt like the worst kind of quitter—the one who said she'd always be there and then when the time came she was gone. Parts of her psyche were telling her that she wasn't doing enough. Maybe there was still something she could offer to the police to aid their capture. Distance was key, though. Her personal involvement created a conflict of interest, she would not know what was best for Jerome. She would have to leave the rest to medical professionals. This was her compromise.

That is, if Jerome could ever reach the point of turning himself in, or the police making that decision for him.

Because Bessie survived, her tragedy was minimized and she was forgotten in the news where her ordeal was reported on briefly. Mr. Haly told them all not to speak to the media and to redirect reporters to him, and so, he fielded all of the media. Which suited everybody just fine, tight-knit as they were. Bessie did not envy his ordeal. That was months ago. Life was somewhat normal now.

The gas leak attack from the Jack-in-the-box caused Bessie to hallucinate for days after. Fergus Belcher had discovered her convulsing on the floor of the practice tent. He swore with every single reiteration that it took him many seconds to figure it was Bessie. Her mild features were stretched beyond recognition. Her brows were raised so high that he feared her skin would rip right off her forehead. Her eyelids had retracted into her skull sockets, leaving nothing but great bulging eyes. Bessie rarely showed all of her teeth when smiling, but her manic, wrinkled grin put every single one on full display, even down to the molars and wisdom teeth in the back. Foamy drool spilled from the corners, and sometimes flecks spewed from her mouth, pushed by forced laughter. Fergus said that he would never forget the sounds she made. Her grin, mangled and twisted as it was, appeared to be gleeful, but the sounds coming from her were ones of fear and crying, like she didn't want to. Like some evil force was making her do so.

Bessie couldn't recall much of this. She woke up in the hospital, and when she discovered that hospitals employed security personnel, it was difficult to convince her to leave when the time came to check out. Jerome knew practically everything about her—where she lived, where she traveled, and all identifiable traits inbetween. Once she even suffered a panic attack when a female news anchor, who happened to be ginger, appeared in her peripheral on the 5 o'clock news.

Spacing out became a regular occurrence. Bessie would frequently lapse into a thousand yard stare, retreating into her mind, removing herself from the world. Mr. Haly couldn't risk the liability. Bessie insisted she could still walk her tightrope, but she was now forbidden from performing without a safety net for the foreseeable future.

Bessie did not hear from Jerome ever again after the Jack-in-the-box. Some of that lapse was owed to his incarceration, but when he escaped, Bessie did not have a restful night's sleep since, and to her, it was a waiting game. Still, he sent no letters, no gifts, and no warnings as to where he was. Gotham seemed to be his permanent playground, but Bessie had no peace in that knowledge. No matter where Haly's took her in the country, no place on Earth would be far enough.

Not even a year had passed since the rusted carousel incident.

The Strunas had just finished dinner on a quiet, autumn night. Bessie flopped onto her couch-bed, watching the tiny, blocky TV placed in one of the kitchen cabinets. Some televised gala was on. Bessie wasn't terribly interested, but she was too listless at the moment to bother changing the channel because of her full stomach. Letting her meal digest, she would summon the energy to switch channels later. Until then, she watched the TV because it was merely there. Mrs. Struna washed dishes beside, while Mr Struna wiped down the narrow dining table, popping it back up into the wall when he was done.

Bessie reclined, hearing the TV, but not quite listening. Her new tightrope pointe shoes came in that morning. The others had since worn out. Tomorrow morning at practice she would have to break them in.

And then, the face that haunted her nightmares for almost a year edged onto the television screen. The transition had been so quick that Bessie seized as though Jerome materialized then and there in her caravan, and the shock kept her from discerning the difference for a long extension.

Jerome was talking, gesturing grandly, dressed to the nines in a black suit topped with a bow-tie, commanding the stage he found for himself.

With a gun held playfully in his grasp.

Bessie heard nothing he was saying. Just the mere image arrested her attention, and the world fell away. Her heart thumped in maddening rhythm. Though she was sitting in her own home, several states separated from Gotham, her blind fear was telling her to run.

"Elisabeta?" said her father, Lovro, noticing her change. He followed Bessie's eye line. He immediately stopped wiping his fingers on the rag in his hands. "Magda," he said warningly.

Mrs Struna looked and immediately dropped the plate she held back into the soapy water. She looked fearfully at her daughter's reaction. "Lovro, get the remote," she said in the thick Slovene accent she shared with her husband.

Bessie was at the mercy of the cameras filming the event, she could not leave, she could not turn her back on such a thing now.

Another man, similarly dressed, darkly handsome, joined Jerome on stage. This other man was intervening and speaking privately to Jerome. He did not have a face that belonged to any of Jerome's Maniax.

Bessie could not prepare herself for what happened next, not even in her wildest imaginings.

The other man produced a knife from his side and jammed it forcefully into Jerome's neck.

Bessie shrieked, clapping her hands to her mouth, her panicked whimpers escaping.

Her parents scrambled, yelling at each other to find the remote to turn it off. They drowned out the TV, but the images Bessie saw were louder than sound.

Jerome faltered, wide-eyed, lowering slowly onto the stage, a lack of understanding in his eyes.

And inside, all Bessie could feel was a terrible, terrible confliction. Yes, the monster was gone.

But so was the Jerome she knew before. And now there was no chance for him to come back.


	2. One Year Later

_One Year Later..._

Haly's Circus completed another cross-country tour and had finally cycled back to Gotham.

Bessie dreaded returning.

She rocked with the moving caravan. Her father and mother were in the car up front which was pulling it along the highway. Green pastures rolled by the window above her couch-bed, but soon they would give way to a couple dots of houses, then stout buildings, and finally immense skyscrapers. Bessie sat on her unfolded mattress, bent over, resting her face in her hands meditatively. She wasn't ready.

Gotham was where the trouble started. And just when she was finally beginning to feel some distance, too—from how she almost lost her life, from Lila's end, from...him.

She didn't want reasons to think of Jerome. He was gone a long time ago. He couldn't get her now.

Yet, his presence lingered like a perfume in the air. In the Big Top. In the cafeteria. Everywhere he frequented or touched. His deeds and their aftermath could not be erased. Moving on without him was a long process Bessie endured that still was not over, but at the very least, she could say that some progress had been made since witnessing his demise on that tiny television screen. These days, she could almost go a day or two without remembering him, which was a major step up from every waking minute during the year prior.

Gotham, however, had the potential to undo everything. Jerome was just so permeated into that city's air. The streets still bore the echoes of his brief but nightmarish crime spree.

Bessie sighed and released her face. Fortifying her spine, she planted her hands on her knees in submission to her fate. Gotham could not be avoided forever. She would have to get through this, one way or another.

_Maybe it won't be as bad as I'm making it out to be, _she told herself, rising. Sometimes the expectation of doing something unwanted was more daunting than actually doing it. She could get through this. The support of Haly's Circus was behind her should she ever fail or fall. Two years was enough for them to prove this time and time again.

Bessie was now a whole half inch taller than when Gotham last saw her. Four-foot-eleven was in range, but it was iffy these days on whether she could ever break the five foot barrier, given her age of nineteen. She tucked a strand of her now platinum-blonde bob behind her ear. In regard to her hair she just felt a change had been necessary. Some said it was a natural impulse after the incident, a reactionary break to somehow distance herself from that point in time, to exercise and regain a sense of control that she felt she had lost. Truly, though, Bessie did not have a rebellious bone in her body.

Not even the color was enough. Her hair's natural volume was also toned down, as she adopted a straightening iron routine. The old, natural, brown, fluffy style was no more. A brief rumor floated through the circus at the time that Bessie was so fearful of Jerome returning that the hair bleach was her adopting a timid disguise, to throw off his recognition.

Bessie never corrected anyone over it.

She leaned a hand on the kitchen sink counter, staring out the window pensively at a group of cows grazing in the vast, green farm field that stretched to the horizon. A memory she hadn't recalled in nearly a year flashed into her mind—she was seventeen again, at this very counter, baking blondies for a friend whom she thought had been sad.

Bessie pressed her lips and let her hand drop off the counter. Truly she had not been able to eat blondies since that day.

Gotham drew near. And with it, seemed to still carry a dense atmosphere of memories that Bessie had hoped were left far behind.

She got to work on making herself a sandwich for lunch. Gotham would have to be treated just like any other city.

* * *

_Two Days Later..._

Gotham was darkly beautiful. Dark being the key word. Her architecture was cold, yet elegant. The skies above were grey and bloated with light rainwater more often than not. The city was almost regal. However, it hid a sinister problem deep within it's cracks and crevices. She had the look of a city of class, but Gotham's history was stained in blood and alternating red and blue lights.

That's why excursions from the grounds were never done alone.

Bessie stepped out from the restaurant, cocooned in a group of ten other circus kids, giggling at a joke Octavio Campos just told them. John Grayson led his fiancee Mary Lloyd outside by the hand.

No rain was scheduled for today, the skies had opened up. A soft orange sunset was unsuccessfully trying to peek around the towering downtown buildings.

The circus kids had all made good on their promise to never neglect their brethren again. Jerome hung heavy on all their minds, an achingly regretful lesson in not being the support he could have needed. No one would ever know the real reasons for Jerome's final snap, so blame could not be pinned on any one person, but everyone carried some share of the 'What If's. What if we visited him more? What if we knew of the abuse? What if we just asked him how he was doing more often? What if, what if, what if...

John and Mary seemed to argue less, too, no doubt realizing their family's petty squabbles didn't matter greatly in the grand scheme of things when compared to the tragic saga of the Valeskas.

They all gathered at the bus stop down the way. The Circus was situated in an open field on the outskirts of the city, much too far to walk. They chatted among themselves until their bus came.

The circus kids, by extension, were always like adopted brothers and sisters, but ever since one broke rank and fell away, they acted more like it from then on. Bessie still held a sense of inner conflict over this. She was grateful to have their restrengthened bonds, her wish from years ago had come true, but something tragic was needed in order to create something beautiful. Maybe in a book or a movie that would have been poetic, but in real life, the sacrifice to get there had been steep and life-altering.

By the time they arrived home, the sun was gone, night was absolute, and stars splattered the widened sky where skyscrapers couldn't block them. While city cores were wonderful and exciting to visit, Bessie could never find herself living in one, though. Something about the fresh scent of the outdoors and warm popcorn still said home.

The fairgrounds were still draped with the hundreds of light bulbs on poles, guiding them all back home.

Bessie glanced aside down the big, grassy expanse, just for a second, and found the same alder tree in the distance from her last visit, still hanging over the black crack cutting the landscape. The long drop into the Gotham river.

She immediately turned away, shaking off the bad memory.

Some of them kept their conversations alive on the walk back, breaking off when their caravans came up. Bessie ended up being the third to last. She turned to Hannah and Junie Paisley to wave goodbye with a smile for their enjoyable afternoon out when they were approached. Clarence Humboldt, the ringmaster, a normally jolly man with a rich, decadent voice, wasn't looking so jolly right now.

"Hey girls," he greeted.

"Hey, Mr. Humboldt," said Hannah. Her smile faded. "Something wrong?"

"It's the darndest thing, I've been trying to find Gideon all day. It's his turn for night patrol tonight. Have any of you girls seen him?"

"No," said Hannah.

"I haven't," added Junie.

Bessie shook her head.

Clarence put his hands on his hips and looked out at the clustered caravans, as if Gideon could walk out from any of them at any minute. "Well, if any of you see him, tell him that I'm looking for him."

"Sure thing," said Junie with a nod. "I'm sure he's here somewhere."

"Good night, girls. Thanks." Clarence waved and left the way he came.

Bessie said goodbye to the Paisley twins and pulled her key out of her pocket, opening her door. The windows were pitch black from the outside, meaning her parents must have still been out. She shut the door behind her, the single-lane interior lit across the center from light coming through the kitchen sink window. Her key clacked on the counter as she set it down, and shrugged off her coat. She noticed the piece of paper on the counter as she hung her coat on the hook. She leaned over to read it.

_Elisabeta,_

_Will come back later. The Rossetti's invited us over to dinner. Hope you had fun._

_Love you_

So her parents weren't home, which explained the lights. Bessie straightened her rumpled black t-shirt where the coat caused it to twist. It wasn't late enough to go to bed yet, she could probably get some TV in.

Bessie's loose arm at her side was suddenly wrenched behind her back and her heart lurched. A hand already clapped her mouth shut before her instinctive scream escaped, muffling the sound into flesh. Bessie struggled wildly, hollering against the hand for someone outside to hear her, but whoever invaded her home was too strong. She whimpered, using her feet to gain traction to run, but she could not break the iron grip. Her panicked, staccato breaths scraped through her nose. Her assailant forced her against themself, squeezing her like a boa constrictor.

"Honey, I'm home," a voice greeted darkly in her ear. "Have the nightmares gone away yet?"


	3. A Waking Nightmare

Bessie stiffened.

"That's a good girl," her assailant said, his warm breath puffing against her ear, bringing back yet another unwanted sensory memory.

That voice. It could only be one person.

And it only belonged in the past.

Bessie didn't realize she was spending precious seconds by wilting and not fighting back, but this moment could not be. She _saw_ what happened, clear as day. This was someone else. Someone who only sounded like him. It wasn't him. She remembered his voice being sweeter and clearer than this, how could she ever forget it? This one was too gravelled, too weary.

The assailant lowered his hand off her mouth, but not his other arm's grip keeping her exactly where she was, backed against solid human wall.

"Jerome?" Bessie whispered, barely audible, not wanting to hear the real answer. She was deathly scared. _Lie to me, whoever you are,_ she thought desperately. _Lie. Lie, please..._

"Hi, Bess," he said smoothly, the smile unseen but heard.

The arm released Bessie. At the slightest hint of loosening, she charged from the hold, swatting the arm away, not waiting. She whirled so hard that her hair fanned and she reeled, slapping her hand onto a cupboard to catch herself. Gentle, yellowish light from the window cast an ominous stripe against a young man in stark white clothing—just head-to-toe white, even down to his shoes. The face was still draped in darkness.

"D-Don't don't come any closer," panted Bessie, flashing her palm.

"Not even a hello, Bess?" said the young man, spreading his arms in presentation. "It's been a while, after all." He stepped closer to the light where it touched his pale neck.

Bessie reached blindly in the sink—a frying pan, a knife, a plate to throw like a discus, anything to intimidate him to stay away from her. But the sink was empty. "I-I said stay back," she warned. Her knees wobbled and she almost stumbled again.

The man in white placed a hand over his heart. "That stings, Bess. That really does." He took the final step out of the darkness, revealing himself, and Bessie yelped before holding her mouth shut in alarm.

He was something out of a nightmare. The face bore much smaller resemblance to how she remembered, yet he retained enough to be nothing else but Jerome.

But the stitches...

"C'mere," drawled Jerome, eyes sparkling, opening his arms wide. "Give us a hug."

Silvery stitches lined his face in a seamed circle, stopped inches before his hairline and ears, like it was an android face panel he could simply pop off. The skin on the inside of the ring was wrinkled and tender, with redness around the rim. Some spots even seemed overly stretched, especially his mouth. Raccoon-style red circles were also lined over his eye sockets. What sort of gruesome accident had happened?

Jerome took advantage of Bessie's moment of paralyzation. He embraced her before it even occurred to her that he approached. Bessie's senses were floaty and disoriented, trapped in his hold. She did not succumb to the automatic return of wrapping her arms around him, she couldn't. Her arms hung heavy at her sides. She was convinced fleetingly that this vision had to have been a ghost. But this ghost of the past was solid and warm...

Jerome, meanwhile, was quite enthusiastic, grunting from the effort he was making to encapsulate her. "_Mmph_. There we go," he said, extending his words sing-song like, patting her back. "I know, how terribly rude of me to barge in unannounced, I should have scheduled, but I just love your looks of surprise!"

Bessie still remembered how her skin crawled on that last day he touched her, when he trapped her inside the broken carousel, and the feeling was reawakening. Before it emerged enough to make her squirm, though, Jerome thankfully released her. As he stepped back, Bessie took in a breath. Her eyes were so busy tracking every single stitch lining his face when she should have been thinking on her feet. Unpredictability was Jerome's new predictability, yet, the horrible misalignment of the features she once knew almost brought her a sense of pity.

Almost.

The old feelings, when Jerome was one of her greatest friends, was excruciatingly difficult to banish. They would return just by sight, and her memories of his vicious deeds would always need to follow in order to bring her clarity to her new reality.

But that wasn't so much of a problem when he was dead.

Jerome looked Bessie up and down. "Hey, you do something with your hair?" he said conversationally.

Bessie made her first move. Hand shaking, she placed it on the counter. "How...? You—...you're alive?" she said in a soft exhale, but it was enough to wind her.

Jerome brushed her question off with a wave. "Long story, babe, I've told it like ten times today already. Tell you about it later. Right now, we have very important things to discuss, don't we? We left off on a bit of a cliffhanger, I think."

He looked her dead in the eye. Though his smile shined, it was not harmless. Bessie became intimidated by his stare. She unintentionally glanced at the crooked stitches again, unable to see anything else.

"What?" said Jerome with a chuckle. His smile then faded like a thought suddenly occurred to him. "Is there something on my face?" Then he burst into a cackle that wrinkled his face and startled Bessie.

She regripped the counter, her fingers paling. "I saw you die," she whispered through his ebbing laughter.

Jerome wagged his finger in admonishment. "Ah, ah. Didn't your mother ever tell you that you shouldn't believe everything you see on TV?"

Somehow, some way, Jerome had survived his stabbing. And by doing so, was enacting Bessie's biggest fear: coming back for her. To finish where they'd left off. Her knees almost gave up on her, jellifying.

Even his voice was surreal, it was a sound she long accepted to never hear again. Hearing it resurrected, much like the boy it belonged to, made her believe more and more that he could not truly be here. This figure was a terrifying manifestation of her guilt and imagination. Or had she dreamed for a whole year that Jerome had been killed, because of wishful thinking? Reality was shifting before her eyes, she was fighting to piece what was real and what wasn't in her head. She touched her forehead to ground her for just a moment's peace.

Jerome, man or manifestation, kept going anyway, true to his nature. He shrugged without a care. "Like I said, long story. Listen, these pleasantries have been wonderful, I'd love to sit down for tea and scones, but I'm afraid I'm here on business." He looked at his wrist at an imaginary watch, touching a hand to his cheek. "And I daresay, we are frightfully behind schedule!" He snapped to attention, clasping his hands behind his back, posture impeccable. "I've come for _you_, Bess. Your carriage awaits. If you'll just follow me out this door, please..."

Bessie shook her head so much that her blonde hair wiggled. "I'm not going with you," she said. Who cared as to the how's and the why's, leaving with him was a natural refusal.

Jerome gave a laboured sigh as if expecting that answer, rolling his eyes to the ceiling. "All right," he grumbled. "I did the nice thing first, but just remember that it's your fault I had to go bad cop on this one."

With frightening dexterity, he rushed Bessie. Twisting her arm behind her back, her forced her flat onto the dining table with a resounding crash. Bessie's body burned with an insatiable need to be freed. Cold that had absorbed into the table bled into her warm body. She'd never been handled by anybody this way, which made her ignite from the unfairness and intrusiveness. She thrashed, but Jerome was frighteningly strong, laying his weight on top of her to hold her still.

He was no figment of the imagination. He was very, _very_ real.

"See?" said Jerome brightly, leaning down to her ear. "You don't like what happens when you don't do what I say, do you?"

Bessie panted. His weight was crushing her into the table, her cheek pressed to the hard surface. A revisit to the carousel could not happen. She barely got through her ordeal the first time, and it scarred deep. Whatever happened tonight, she could not go with him, for it was a guarantee that she would not return to Haly's this time. Jerome was barely merciful, and he made it clear that day that he only saw her as a replaceable pawn—which still brought her a lingering flicker of sadness.

She stopped struggling, fighting to use the energy to think instead.

"That'a girl," congratulated Jerome, patting her head. "I may still be fuzzy on a lot of things, Bess, but I definitely remember you. And I definitely remember that it doesn't take much to overpower you. Now, let's try this again." He squeezed her wrist enough to sear the bone and she grunted, shutting her eyes tight. "Are you going to come with me, or will I have to make you?"

Bessie shuddered from the threat, which Jerome was sure to feel. Her voice was corked. Saying yes spelled her doom, and saying no did the same. What could she do? How could she escape? Her gaze wandered all over her dark caravan to spark an idea. The seconds ticked.

The weight lifted. In a bout of impatience, Jerome got off of her. Bessie had no time for relief, though, for Jerome then grabbed her upper arms and hurled her aside like she was as inanimate as a coat rack. Bessie's feet almost left the floor, she flew backward until the couch caught her, bouncing her twice for how hard she landed.

Jerome advanced, slapping his hands on the armrest and the back-cushion beside her head, trapping her. Her back jolted straight.

"REACT!" he bellowed in her face.

Bessie flinched, shutting her eyes with a whimper, but she remained impassive. This all sounded so familiar. Her mind flashed back to the carousel incident, when Jerome admitted that it drove him crazy that she was trying to stay cool, because he wanted a breakage, an unhinged reaction from her.

"I said I'm not like you," she reminded him, her voice delicate for fear of feeding his anger, but it was the same unshakable answer to then and now. When he got really close, she remarked inwardly of how a faint scent of formaldehyde seemed to be sticking to him.

"You're EXACTLY like me!" Jerome's temper spike, however, was short-lived, and he seemed to adopt a more analytical approach. "We just keep hitting this one little snag..."

He stood up. The cushion beside Bessie's head re-inflated and she breathed out to release the tension. Jerome walked two steps forward before turning for two steps back—the cramped caravan wasn't generous for pacing.

"Like it or not, we were each other's greatest friends," he said. "I know, gag me with a spoon, right? The sap was through the roof. But we had fun, didn't we?"

"You can't use that against me. You were the one who left. After what you did, you can't expect me to blindly follow—"

"Yeah, yeah, takes more bravery to stand up to your friends than your enemies, blah, blah, blah," mocked Jerome with a dismissive wave. "I even said to myself before this, 'nah, she's never gonna go for it'. But that's okay."

"I...it is?"

Jerome flashed all of his teeth in a happy grin. "Uh-huh! Because, lucky me, I got the inside knowledge," he said, tapping his temple. "I know exactly how to get you to do what I want."

Prancing lightly on his feet to the kitchen sink to a jaunty tune only he could hear in his head, he clutched the chrome edge and leaned far over, looking out of the window in yearning. "So many people still here at Haly's Circus, isn't there? Why, I'm pretty sure I saw Mr. Humboldt on his way home when I got here! Oh, and Mr. Haly. So predictable, isn't he? Still had the lights on and everything, working away at his desk..."

Bessie froze. _No_, she thought. _Don't threaten them, don't do this..._

"Goodness, nothing has really changed here, has it? It's nice when things can stay the same, isn't it, Bessie?" He looked over his shoulder. The eyes were mirthful, cheeks pushed up against the lower lids, but oh so dark. Maybe his voice and mannerisms were putting on a facade, but the eyes never moved, never blinked, telegraphing the truth of his intentions.

Bessie jostled from her seat to stand, holding her hands out as if they could stop him. "Jerome, you can't—"

"And look! A new addition to the family! The Camposes, were they?"

"They've done nothing to you, _please_, don't..."

"Bessie, you already know what you have to do. Things don't have to change, you know." He walked away from the window and came to her, which took but two steps. Looming like a great shadow, he blocked out the light behind him. He looked down on her, the smile now matching his eyes, wicked and anticipative. "Come on, now, I don't have all night..."

The memory of his threat at the old, rusted carousel two years ago echoed in Bessie's ears. _"I'm not some animal. You may not believe me, but I can be quite reasonable. But if some people get in my way...like say, anyone at Haly's Circus..."_

"Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock..."

"Okay, okay, okay," Bessie said breathlessly, holding her hands in surrender. "I'm cooperating." An adrenaline spike caused tremors in her body, squeezing her lungs until they shriveled. The past year had been torture. It always felt like Jerome was leering over her shoulder. Did this visit mean he really was?

Jerome smacked his hands together in a single clap. "Wonderful! Oh, and I hope you don't mind, but I brought some insurance, too. You know, just in case I had to really convince you." He reached over to the caravan door behind him, which wasn't far of a stretch for him, and knocked. "Come on in, boys!" he sang.

The door clicked and in walked two burly men in glaringly punk-like apparel. Clumsily applied, skull-like make-up acted as their masks. The one sporting the neon purple mohawk was clad all in black leather, while the long-haired associate favored ripped denim and patches over his jacket.

"We'll come back for the others in a couple days," Jerome instructed his goons. He grinned at Bessie. "I need to catch up with an old friend first."

There was nowhere Bessie could run.

Just as she was about to take a reluctant step forward, Jerome's strong, unwanted fingers clamped her shoulder and held her still. "Ah, ah, ah, wait a moment. Can't steal you in broad bulblight, can I? Watch..." He looked out the window, waiting for something.

Bessie's breaths were shallow and even then they felt too loud. She willed herself to make her presence as small and quiet as possible, because in her panic mode it was entirely reasonable to her that they'd forget about her if she did not alert them to her presence. Never had her will to just magically disappear been so blazing within her.

The lights outside extinguished, casting them all into full night. Jerome had been waiting for someone to cut the lights to give them long enough to slip away. He planned this.

"After you," Jerome said to Bessie, bowing and sweeping out his arm.

Suddenly, the idea Bessie had been waiting for came. The hour was Jerome's double-edged sword; it worked to her advantage, too. She could flee into the darkness. All she needed to do was just get outside.

Remaining tight-lipped and hiding her moment of eureka behind a troubled face, Bessie descended the stairs slowly to buy the smallest scraps of time she could get away with. The fresh air greeted her, cooling the sweat on her forehead, but it could not soothe her. She itched to break out into a sprint then and there when her shoes touched trampled grass, but she stayed her legs. _Soon. Soon, just wait..._she thought. The caravan maze was mapped in her mind, she knew the multitudes of hiding places and turns that would conceal her and disorient anyone else who did not know it. As soon as they began walking she could calculate the perfect time to break free.

The goons were ahead of her and Jerome just behind her. There would only be one shot at this.

"Oh, and I know I'm rehashing an old trick," said Jerome behind her, "but when it works, it works."

Bessie was too slow. Jerome reached around and muzzled her with a cloth. Her sharp intake of breath was instinctive and she got a lungful of something that smelled of rotten bananas. Spots danced in front of her eyes. Her thoughts clouded. Almost just as soon, she ragdolled and her sight turned black. Whether Jerome caught her or not, she didn't feel a thing after.

* * *

**A/N: You would think I would have more time to write during quarantine, but I work at an establishment that is considered an essential service, so I cannot quarantine out of necessity. My hours have increased quite a bit, leaving me even less time than I ever had before. I somehow managed to pump this chapter out on my weekend, I was totally in the zone!**  
**Stay safe, stay healthy everyone!**


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